President Signs Bill On Campaign Gifts; Begins Money Tour

By ELISABETH BUMILLER with PHILIP SHENON

Published: March 28, 2002

ATLANTA, March 27—
President Bush signed a major overhaul of the nation's campaign finance system into law without ceremony today, then almost immediately left Washington on Air Force One for a two-day, three-state trip to raise nearly $4 million for Republican candidates and his party.

''I'm not going to lay down my arms,'' Mr. Bush said this morning at his first stop, in Greenville, S.C., when asked if he thought it incongruous to be raising money after signing a bill that will ban some of the activities he engaged in today.

Mr. Bush added that he would not have signed the bill, which takes effect after the November elections, had he been ''really unhappy'' with it. But he also issued a statement critical of major provisions.

The quiet, no-cameras signing, with the fund-raising tour as a follow-up, underscored how little enthusiasm the president has for the legislation, which had a Senate Republican champion in John McCain of Arizona, Mr. Bush's rival for the presidential nomination two years ago. (The absence of a signing ceremony also meant no White House photo opportunity for Mr. McCain.)

The bill was staunchly opposed by the Republican Congressional leadership, and some Republicans are still fuming at Mr. Bush for standing aloof from their efforts to kill the politically popular measure, which remains under attack: within hours of the signing today, Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, and the National Rifle Association had filed separate suits in federal court in Washington challenging it on constitutional grounds.

Throughout the day, in an aggressive Southern swing that seemed intended to reassure Republicans that the White House would help them collect as much money as possible before the law takes effect, Mr. Bush helped raised $1.1 million for Representative Lindsey Graham's Senate campaign in South Carolina and more than $1.4 million for Representative Saxby Chambliss's Senate campaign here in Georgia. The president is to travel to Dallas on Thursday for a $1 million fund-raiser for the Senate campaign of John Cornyn, the Texas attorney general.

Of the total of $2.5 million raised at the two events today, the White House said, $500,000 was in unlimited soft-money donations to the state Republican parties, contributions that are restricted by the new law.

The $25,000 that each donor paid the Georgia Republican Party to meet with the president tonight, for example, would have been forbidden under the new law, which not only bars soft money to the national parties but also limits such donations to state and local parties to $10,000 a year per individual.

On the other hand, the legislation also increases, to $2,000 an election, the amount that a person may contribute directly to a candidate, twice the amount that Mr. Bush helped raise in such hard-money contributions today.

As he began his trip, Democrats criticized Mr. Bush for using Air Force One for political-fund-raising travel. They noted that both Mr. Graham and Mr. Chambliss supported legislation during the Clinton administration that would have required Congressional candidates to reimburse the government fully when the plane was used for such purposes.

The White House replied that the Graham and Chambliss campaign committees would reimburse the government, but for only part of the costs, since, the administration said, Mr. Bush will also be promoting his domestic security program during the trip. The president made two 20-minute speeches about domestic security amid his fund-raising activities today.

The costs, the White House said, will be allocated using a formula that dates from the Reagan administration, if not earlier. The formula divides the president's time between political activity, for which the campaigns pay related travel costs, and official White House activity. ''There is no additional cost to the taxpayers,'' said Anne Womack, a White House spokeswoman.

Still, Democrats argued that the reimbursement would ultimately cover only a small fraction of the trip's expense, since, they said, it reflects neither the additional security costs for the president on the road nor the true costs of operating Air Force One. In the past, the Republican National Committee has estimated the costs of operating the presidential jet at $35,000 an hour.

''Any member of Congress who voted to do away with this unseemly behavior and now actively engages in it,'' said David Sirota, a spokesman for Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee, ''should either reimburse the taxpayers the hundreds of thousands of dollars the trips cost or explain why taxpayers should have to pick up the tab of their partisan political activities.''

Kevin Bishop, a spokesman for Representative Graham, said that ''there's a well-established formula for dividing expenses between the campaign and the administration, and we are following that formula.'' Mr. Bishop said it was ''not surprising that partisan Democrats are lashing out: President Bush's endorsement of Lindsey Graham is a bitter pill for them to swallow.''

A spokeswoman for the Chambliss campaign had no immediate comment and referred questions to the Republican Party.

The campaign finance bill's four major House and Senate sponsors were informed of the president's signature on it only after the fact today, while he was on his way to South Carolina, where he engaged in his harshest campaigning of the 2000 primaries and ultimately trounced Mr. McCain. Mr. Graham, a recipient of the president's political largess today, was a major supporter of Mr. McCain during the primary campaign there, and also of the campaign finance bill.

Mr. McCain said in a brief statement issued by his office today that ''I'm pleased that President Bush has signed campaign finance reform legislation into law.'' Of the lack of ceremony, Mr. McCain later joked that the president never promised him a Rose Garden.

In his statement on the legislation, Mr. Bush said he thought parts of it flawed. He said he did not agree with provisions barring individuals, rather than just unions and corporations, from making soft-money donations to the national parties.

Though his Justice Department will be obliged to defend the new law against the suits filed today, Mr. Bush also said he had concerns about the constitutionality of a provision that restricts advocacy groups' campaign advertisements naming specific candidates in the periods immediately before primary and general elections. He said the provision ''restrains the speech of a wide variety of groups on issues of public import in the months closest to an election.''

He added that as the culmination of more than six years of debate among legislators, citizens and groups, the measure did not reflect ''the full ideals of any one point of view.'' But he signed it, he said, because ''it does represent progress in this often-contentious area of public policy debate.''

Photo: On a visit to Atlanta, President Bush was briefed yesterday by Kevin Kamperman, director of a hazardous-materials program at Georgia Tech, while emergency personnel tended to mock victims. The president's Southern tour combines fund-raising and domestic-security promotion. (Reuters)(pg. A22)